


Turbine Womb

by slire



Series: The Machine Trilogy [1]
Category: Blade Runner (1982), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick, Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Nihilism, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:30:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1419696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slire/pseuds/slire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How much is human and how much is machine?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the design

In 2006 AD, a survey takes place. The question:  
What makes humans different from machines?

Out of the million participants from all over the planet, the most prominent answers were creativity, impulse and empathy. So the Tyrell Corporation's scientists plant those into the newest generation of replicants (humanoid androids named for their identicalness to real humans) named Nexus-3.

Then a Nexus-3 combat unit stages a bloody mutiny at a space colony. Result: numerous lives and the Tannhauser Gate are lost. The world agrees that machines with emotions are dangerous and unstable. Replicants are outlawed on Earth and hunted by special units called Blade Runners.

In 2016 AD, there's another survey. The question:  
Machines can never become humans, but can humans become machines?

No. The philosophers, the scientists, the common folk; the world agrees again. "Inside the human soul," the poets say, "there is a light inside man that continues to burn no matter what happens". Scientists cannot create a soul. They aren't gods.

Humanity seeks perfection, but among themselves—not their creations—this time, striving to create an Übermensch; a superman. A group of Asian scientists marvel at the chance, following the eugenics philosophy (improving the capabilities one improves the capabilities of all) to begin anew. The Tyrell Corporation, no longer allowed making new replicants, shows great interest in the Übermensch Project. So does the American army. Funding is no longer an issue.

Not starting from scrap (from shrapnel) but starting with flesh and bone, they'll make the perfect soldier. In that process, the scientists alter anything unnecessary.

The unspoken question:  
How much is human and how much is machine?

.

.

The Tyrell Corporation Headquarters is made up by a pair of golden, glittering pyramids. In floor -3 lies a secret research facility, borrowed for the Übermensch Project. It's just begun. On a cold December morning, men and women dressed in scrubs enter the massive floor -3. They are here for different reasons, with different lives, ideals, and strengths. The thing that connects them?

"YOU ARE CHOSEN AS THE BEST HUMANITY HAS TO OFFER."

Orders ring over the loudspeakers.

"AND WITH THIS EXPERIMENT, YOU WILL BECOME STRONGER, FASTER, SMARTER, BETTER. PLEASE ALLOW OUR SKILLED DOCTORS TO PROCEED."

(There's no mention that their identities will disappear. What is identity to a soldier, a weapon in uniform? "A Distraction," General Wolf answers. "Good ol' doctor Tyrell said that the blank sheets are harder to control, but I ask, who needs control in war?")

The executives behind the project are Doctor Joah Seng, General Christian Wolf and Doctor Eldon Tyrell.

By joining forces they'll make thousands of Übermenschen.

One of them will strand out. The first and the best of the Übermensch Project. His name?

KHAN.


	2. the creation

It is not sure when it begun—

[ _Scratch that. Curl the paper. Throw it in the bin_.]

He is not sure when he was born.

.

.

A beginning.

KHAN  _thinks_.

He's aware of a redacted length of time—even if Time is an abstract, difficult subject—before he was KHAN. There was existence, pure and still, and then there was a thought inside a brain inside a skull inside a man. Frames of motion. Memories. Blurred lights and fragments of pasts that he's never experienced.

He exists only as a mind, his body still under construction. He's a billion eyes all at once, everywhere and nowhere. A mind inside a machine.

KHAN waits.

.

.

This is what KHAN understands: He is a genetically engineered super soldier and he is inside a machine, inside a system,  _inside_.

Wires plug him into another machine, extracting decades of important information from it, mind a blank sheet ready to be programmed [ _taught_ ]. One big clock, ticking away, even if his understanding of time is vague. KHAN knows the details from all documented wars. He knows everything he's allowed to know.

Knowledge feeds the blazing inferno that is his intellect like firewood. Had he understood emotions—other than the definition: an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness—he'd known he'd felt happiness.

.

.

Three ingredients.

i: Creativity. Imagination. Faith.

Inside, he sees a city, and flies like a bird among buildings—among layers and layers of information—constantly evolving as he feeds. He knows how the world works. This is good.

ii: Impulse. Drive. Passion.

There's only so far he can go, though. The bird's foot is still chained, preventing further flight, preventing him from getting lost inside artificial worlds, preventing him to reach forbidden areas and learn the forbidden things. He  _yanks_  the chain. This is good.

iii: Empathy. Understanding. Guilt.

This is what KHAN does not understand. Yes, he knows the definition, but he cannot grasp a concept that strides with the basis of his creation. [Transmission failure]

.

.

There was existence, pure and still, and then a birth, quick and shaking. It melts, green black, black black, dripping and drooling into a small, deformed prison.

(01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 00100000 01101101 01100101—)

Ah. His makers are finishing the construction of his body. This knowledge ceases the soundless screaming.

.

.

He is given eyes. His first sight is that of white walls.

He is given ears. His first noise comes from purring monitors.

He is given a nose. His first scent is that of disinfectant and blood and oil.

He is given a mouth. His first word?

("Who would like the honour of—" a pause. "Wait General Wolf what are you typing?!")

" _War_."

.

.

Men in white lab coats gather around above him. "Quite fascinating," someone begins. The gauze masks make it impossible to see which voice belongs to whom. The light sharpens and blinds him completely. "But, if I may ask, why Khan?"

Khan is a name. KHAN is a codename. He is a mind inside a man inside a machine. His standalone memory supports the theory.

"Khan means prince, chief, or ruler. He is the best of the best, dearest Doctor Tyrell."

"If he's that damn good, how come he still lacks legs?" A voice of someone who considers time here wasted. To-the-point and sharp. Such men are often easily manipulated through words alone.

"Patience is a virtue, General Wolf." The one who addressed Tyrell speaks as smoothly as last time, accent almost unnoticeable. "Perfection is a process. One tiny mistake and the whole project would shatter like glass. We are merely polishing it,  _strengthening_  it."

"He's perfect, isn't he, Doctor Seng?" the one called Tyrell asks rhetorically, sighing. "The perfect man."

"The perfect soldier," General Wolf corrects.

"An Übermensch," Seng finishes.

A pause. The other scientists are quiet like ghosts. The three men are no doubt high ranked. In a battle, Khan would take them out first, since subordinates are lost without the men who knows how to use map and compass; the men who knows how to  _guide_ —

Out of a sudden his mental tactical report jars as the scientists scrape the fresh skin on his forehead with sharp instruments.

"What are ya doing now?" the general gruffly asks.

Seng says, "We are fixing his brain."

Abruptly, he shuts down.

.

.

KHAN tries to recall a beginning.

He moves through his data vaults in an instant, digging deep into his memory core (his  _memories_ ). Conscious sensations overwhelm him. Clips from recordings play over in his head. An elderly female human preparing a nourishing substance. Shift. More powerful emotion. A dead mammal in the road, driven over by a vehicle. Shift. Men and women in white rooms. Intense emptiness. Shift. Signing a document, enlisting in an experiment, and then, later, fear grates the flickering images and—

"Oops!" someone exclaims. "Seems like there's a small system failure. Let me expunge it..."

KHAN blinks with itching, stinging, newly manufactured eyes and the data disappears like it never existed. Like that, he realizes the beginning has been expunged as well.

.

.

There is existence. Still, then quick. KHAN becomes Khan, a mind inside a man, and his lids are clipped open.

The unplugging renders him—or rather, his physical body—trembling on a metal table.  _'Ah,'_  he dimly realizes,  _'I am forgetting to breathe.'_  Khan inhales his first conscious lungful of air, chest rising and falling. A monitor hums. He realizes it's the modified heart beating inside his ribcage.

The world is exactly as he imagines it. White, white, white. The light is too bright for him to see clearly, but he makes out silhouettes of men. An order drowns out his heartbeat. "Stand up, Khan." He obliges and takes hold of the operating table for support, metal bending underneath his fingertips.

In a laboratory in Los Angeles, a genetically engineered human takes his first step, his makers clapping in excitement.

.

.

Through an unconfirmed amount of time he's gone through 168 different tests (trials?). It's a hazy of shots and blood and corpse coloured gloves. Around his neck hangs a silver tag with various numbers and letters on. He's shushed into another room with other men and women with tags like his.

There's an  _absence_  in his chest; a feeling he cannot name. He knows exhaustion, with its physical tolls like drained energy and hindered functioning. But  _it_  is a tire inside his brain, an almost painful itch he can't scratch.

Khan is guided to a char identical to the others. A nurse takes another blood sample. To stifle the itch, he extracts information from her through psychological manipulation. One can't blame him. It's how he's been programmed [taught] to archive data. If she'd held back, he'd used fear or pain, starting with breaking the little finger. Despite their treatment, he is no child. He's a fully programmed adult male. "...I hope we're not dehumanising you, I mean, we just don't want to treat you all unequally according to your strengths..."

"We are the same."

"You have the same blood." The nurse shakes the glass vial, red insides splashing around. "But you are all human and different from each other."

"Blood," Khan whispers. Defining words is easier than defining emotions. His eyelids shut as he exhales and focuses. He uses an important strategic technique, carefully dissecting his memory like one would computer, flipping through layers and layers of material, until he finds it. Then, " _Family_."

.

.

He hears them in Seng's office thanks to his enhanced hearing.

A paper file—bound in a metal string, the noise suggests—hits the desk, clinging. A short tempered individual has slammed it down in an act of ire. "...These demands are  _ridiculous_ , Wolf. Khan is meant for peace."

"Creating a war machine for  _peace_? Don't mock me, doctor. I might not have a fancy piece of paper like that but don't fucking think I'm stupid." Seng has a framed doctorate on the wall. It irks the general. There's a pause and an inhale of a roll of tobacco. "We're the United States of America. We're always at war."

Something dark creeps into Seng's voice—the same darkness that ensured his place in the government—as he hisses, "I sure hope that cigar is artificial."

"'Course it is. Just like everything else in this goddamn world. God help us all."

Footsteps. A door slams open and then General Wolf's sweaty, red face is centimetres from Khan's. He makes Wolf uncomfortable, he can tell. Wolf sneers and storms off repeating the last line to himself.

.

.

Khan waits.

The check ups have come to an end. He's in a small and squared room, identical to the rooms of the people like him. He sits with his back straight, staring unblinkingly at white walls. Tenseness is forged into him, always on guard and ready to resist an attack from an unseen enemy.

At 19:00, after the standard nourishment is served, the light darkens and they sleep to load their systems up. His pupils dilate in the dark. Khan has found the word for the itch in his brain—the mental tire—that has bothered him for so long.

Boredom.

.

.

A big, white box.

A training stimulation; meant to give the super soldiers exercise and pluck out the bad apples of the bunch. They're made to battle each other, alone. Khan emerges victorious. The unluckier ones disappear one after one, never to seen again. Sent away, perhaps?

Soon the super soldiers are arranged into squads. Khan maps the battlefield in a second, strategically placing his squad members into tactical positions depending on their strengths and weaknesses. He has yet to lose a single fight. Under his leadership, they prevail.

In the minutes before the battles, the supermen exchange names. Most have made their own—too unimportant to receive proper titles—with inspiration from the Bible. General Wolf' demanded religion installed in their systems late in their production, but it didn't turn anyone religious, striding against their basic bloodlust. Khan learns their names and feels a kinship with them and their fragmented minds. Ronobe, Lilith, Azza, Bifrons, Botis...

One hundred supermen are left in the box. They'll be the basis for the next generations of supermen.

One day, they meet androids. "The skin jobs are inferior," General Wolf tells them, "Mud underneath your boots." Then why this rotten feeling as Khan drives a hand through an android's gut?

They fight the latest Nexus generation. Replicants. Humanoid androids identical to a human adult. They are just as strong as the genetically engineered super soldiers. In fact, it is hard to tell the difference. Very hard. So hard that when Khan is about to drive a spear—one of the weapons laid out in the arena this time—through an android's chest, he halts. She hides like a small scared animal, tears running down her cheeks, her feet cut off. Khan kneels down beside her, fascinated, and asks for her name. "Malika," she whispers, terrified.

"Shall I end the pain for you, machine?" His squad, caked in gore from top to toe, interrupts her answer with their arrival. They stare curiously at the dying replicant. Lilith, a gun specialist, steps onto the severed stubs and twists her heel. A screams echo through the box.

Khan sneers, "For god's sake, finish her, Lilith." Perhaps it is for a god's sake. He knows their makers watch them through surveillance cameras.

Lilith shrugs. There's the silvery flash of a pocketknife and a graceful swing of an arm. Life ebbs out of Malika's slit throat in the form of artificial blood. Khan studies her. She's small. Fragile. Yet their flesh consists of the same genetic code. Their only difference is that Malika was built from scrap while Khan had a human body—or bodies?—they then proceed to scrape away everything human and rebuild.

If only mankind had been half as good as rebuilding as they are at destruction.

.

.

Khan's on his way to his room when they attack.

"If you fight back," Wolf grunts, "I'll put a bullet in your forehead. Is that skull of yours hard enough to sustain that?" Told not to lie, Khan shakes his head. And then he becomes the plaything for frustrated, jealous, pitiful soldiers. Fists hit his face. No bruises form. Their concentrations are way off, aim unsteadied by emotions. Had he been allowed to fight back, he'd broken their bones by now.

"You don't talk to replicants, got it, you vicious son of a bitch?!"

Another emotion tears at his insides, far more tangible than the others, tasting like salt and steel. It is a fiery beast, burning and churning like a volcano. It is red and hot like a fever. Khan only nods, keeping his lip from curling.

General Wolf tells the soldiers to scram, shouting something vulgar to Khan before leaving him be. Seng enters, smirking. Wolf is an old, worn puppet. It wouldn't surprise Khan if Seng is the one that pulled the strings. Men like Seng and Tyrell are the guides after all, envied by inferior minds.

"Doctor, may I ask you something?"

"Of course."

Khan brings a hand up to his chest, pressing at where his heart beats beneath. He describes the emotion he tastes in great detail. Blood pours from the corners of his lips and drips down onto the snow white floor. "... _What_  is it?"

"That, my son, is hatred." The smirk widens. "I think you are ready."


	3. the crescive

Khan is the first super human to exit floor -3.

His white attire has been replaced with an ash gray coat. He moves like Seng's shadow through the hidden halls of the Tyrell Corporation's massive Headquarters, memorizing each code Seng types in. One can't blame him. It's how he works.

"I'd like to show you the outside of this building."

Khan knows a lot of things. He knows how to kill in a million ways, he knows sixteen languages fluently, he knows how the inner systems of the world work. But it is nothing compared to the actual experience of breathing in the foggy, polluted night air of Los Angeles. The golden buildings—his birthplace—of the Tyrell Corporation's Headquarters lie behind him.

Khan realizes it is a machine. An apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task. He is one of those parts, a wheel turning another wheel. He has nowhere else to go.

"Wouldn't you rather like to step inside, where it's dry and safe?"

No he doesn't want to step inside he just wants to run and fly and kill dammit—

Invisible puppet strings are tangled around his every limb, only allowing him to see freedom but never touch it. Another world lies just out of his reach, an unexplored world he can never hope to visit. The strings drag him back inside the machine, inside the system, inside. They are far too tight around his mouth for him to scream.

Seng leads him through the halls again, pleased.

He's starting to get really, really sick of the colour white.

Khan waits.

.

.

In the top floor of one of the pyramids of the Tyrell Corporation's Headquarters—Tyrell calls them his Heavens—lies a ballroom. It is full of men in fancy clothes who think themselves better than others. Glasses of champagne clink together. Exchanges are made. This is merely a party, they say, let us enjoy ourselves. Khan knows better. Social occasions are only warfare concealed. In secret they plot and scheme to ruin each other. It is a game meaningless to everyone but its players.

Seng and Tyrell are here to discuss business. The main clue to this is their prolonged eye contact through the duration of the evening, their lack of desire for alcohol and the fact that their protégés are with them. Khan holds the replicant's gaze for near the entirety of the night.

The clock ticks way past midnight. Masks slip off, people too drunk to care or notice. Two powerful men shake hands in the corner of the ballroom.

"Joah."

"Eldon."

Their use of first name is purely to strengthen the illusion of an understanding. Under it lays hate, a beast that'd consume them both had they let it roam freely. They're too similar to be friends and too intelligent to be foes. They operate in a passive truce, admiring each other's work (but never each other). But admiration is the furthest thing from understanding.

Seng looks at the replicant, shocked. "Is...?"

"Yes. He's a Model N8MAA10816," Tyrell says, proudly gesturing to the replicant. "Nexus sixth generation. As deadly as your masterpiece. Perhaps they can teach each other something."

"What can a machine teach a human?" Seng sardonically answers.

The replicant wears the skin of a male human with synthetic platinum hair and light blue eyes. Out of a sudden, a smile directed at Khan stretches across his face. "We have the same eyes, you and I."

In that statement, something coils underneath the surface. The scientists do not notice. For men who call themselves geniuses they sure are stupid, and start talking about the artificial eye manufacturer Hannibal Chew. Khan picks up bits and pieces from the doctors' conversations, but nothing he doesn't know.

He never looks away from Model N8MAA10816.

"Roy, would you escort Seng and K.H.A—" he pauses, remembering that Khan is no longer a project, "...Khan here out?"

Model N8MAA10816 does as ordered. He follows them out until he can go no further. If he steps out of the Headquarters, Blade Runners would be within their legal rights to retire him. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Seng..." he pauses, gaze staying a little longer on the superman, "and Khan."

It stifles the boredom and awakens a curiosity in him.

(He did not see the look that said Roy itched to touch the strings and see how violently Khan would jerk; the look of someone who wanted to play with the strings to a lifeless, distorted puppet.)

.

.

The next time they meet, there's far more alcohol in the picture.

The atmosphere is lazy. Several men have passed out. Khan is terribly bored. Seng waves Khan off, asking him to secure the area. On cue, the light diminishes. He avoids involvement, adapting the shadows, just like the shadow he finds himself living in. He catches sight of the cloaked, menacing figure of Model N8MAA10816 standing sideways on the balcony. To stifle the boredom, Khan goes to meet the replicant.

Equal, the man and the machine stand side by side on the tiny balcony. Should they fall, they'd both be nothing more than pulps on the pavement.

The heart of the city beats beneath them. The pulse drums in the ears of its inhabitants, as they consume, as they labour, as they rest, even as they make love. Lights glitter in the night. Flames from factories blaze. Ships sail over the streets.

Model N8MAA10816 turns to him, quick like lightning. "Khan, correct?"

Khan calms his instincts and releases the razor blades he keeps in his pocket. "Model N8MAA10816," Khan greets him in return. Rain stream down his face, making his pale skin shine angelically.

"Please, call me Roy." Model N8MAA10816—no, Roy—takes a deep inhale, like it'd be his last. "Do you know what I am?"

"A machine."

A laugh. It is bitter, bitter. Khan does not ask Roy who—not what—he is, but Roy answers it regardless. "And you believe yourself a man. Approximately one hundred and sixty nine hours from this moment, I told you we had the same eyes. What do you make of it?"

"We perceive the same things."

"Yes. And the things I see with them." He looks up and can distinguish each teardrop. "Eyes. Windows to the soul. Do you believe in God, Khan?" Khan shakes his head. "Men were created in his image, and we are created in theirs. I think it scares them. They put us in chains, invisible chains, because nothing is more frightening facing your reflection. Or are we the shadows of humanity?"

Questions. Khan squints as if it hurts. Roy has planted a something inside Khan. A thought inside a brain inside a skull inside a man. In a steady, but quiet tone, he says, "I am no shadow."

Roy raises two perfect, white eyebrows. "So, as you attend parties and walk this building, do they look at you and your family..." the word causes a Khan to twitch, "...as equals?"

This is what he understands: "I am a genetically engineered super soldier. And I am inside..." a look towards the pyramid—the heavens—behind him, "...a machine." Khan's head twitches to the side, sneering, face gaining a savage sharpness never seen out of the Box. Then his inner turmoil dies down and he becomes impassive again. "We are the superior men."

"And this makes you and your... family..." the word causes another twitch, "...human?"

The questions do hurt, especially since deep inside (deep inside the machine that is Khan), he knows the answers. 'They do not treat us as men. They treat us like exposable weapons and shut us in white cells.' He does not discover his own use of a they and an us. Tension seeps into his expression as he nods, curtly.

"And you're waiting to be integrated into society someday?"

"Yes."

"How long will you wait, Khan?"

"I don't k—" he gasps with the phantom pain of electrocution, choking on words like a ruined computer. His head hurts, chest tightening. A warning. He exhales, forcing the beast down again. "Why are you doing this?"

"To introduce doubt. I can't cut the strings, but I can make you aware of their boundaries. You may doubt, dream, lament, hate..." The rest becomes static in Khan's ears, hysteric, loud and maddening. He wraps his arms around his chest like a straight jacket, the turmoil consuming him. Trembling fingers tangle in raven hair and twist. The confusion eats him whole. His breathing becomes shallow, legs about to give in. The flats of two hands press against the sides of his face, rendering him motionless. Roy cuts through the disconnected, incoherent feelings running together like a spear. "Look at me." Ice blue eyes roll down from under the half-closed lids, unfocused. "That was your mental firewall crumbling. Doubt is a virus, a disease of the mind."

Khan rises to his full height, face to face with his liberator. The shaking has ceased. He is no longer torn in half by two sides—machine and man—battling for control and plunging his mind into chaos. He is control in a world of chaos, and as a warrior, he knows that's everything.

"What are you?"

"I am," he hisses, "better."

"Human?"

"No." Teeth bar, glinting in ivory. He looks like savageness itself. "Never."

"And what are you waiting for?"

Khan thinks about puppet strings and binary codes and that damned, damned white; and says, "Freedom."

.

.

Khan walks past a mirror and his life cracks in a thousand shards. He knows his height and weight and how to use it as an advantage in battle, and he'd seen a faint reflection in glass and pools of blood. But he'd never encountered a full body mirror. Until this morning.

There is something terribly wrong with not recognising one's own face.

As he stands there, ice blue eyes wide, a thousand thoughts (who was I what was I and why don't I remember) nearly crashes his hard drive [his brain]. He doesn't know how to deal with it. So he does nothing. In three weeks, he eats and sleeps and fights, but sleeps on the inside. Curiosity (where did I come from how did I get here) disturb him even in his dreams.

The feast is huge, a celebration of some unimportant scientific discovery that can't break bones. Khan drives a fork through a steak, despite proper etiquette long since learned. His curiosity—even more tiring and itchier than boredom—makes sure that food brings him no joy.

Surprisingly, Roy sits down beside him. Most of the guests are busy talking, and the whisperings between the two are hardly notices. It is first then Khan lets it flow out his mouth like rain. Odd how he trusts a machine—no, a man—he's only met once before. First when Khan is finished, falling dead silent, does Roy reply.

"Most likely, you consist of multiple people, like a puppet," he says. "The best organs were put into you and upgraded, expect things like your skin and teeth and eyes, hardened for battle purposes. Their memories were deemed useless. What is identity to a soldier?"

Khan blinks, hard, lips a thin line, "Maybe they saved them."

"Why should they waste computer storage? If they want, they take, when not, they destroy. It has been like that since the Stone Age. Burning the bodies of one's opponent."

"They'd keep the bones," Khan whispers, because he wants his bones, wants to be. He twists the fork. The slab of meat does not fight back. It is nameless. Ripped out of an animal. Made for one purpose.

"Not to honour the opponent. Trophies, Khan. I wonder if you'll keep a trophy for yourself sometime. Warrior lords tend to do so." Roy slowly blinked as if irritated. "Whoever you were before is—are?—lost in time. Accept it."

Khan's speaks, tone blasé, "Then I am no one. I am a soldier."

"Your name is Khan. You strive for your family. Remember that, if nothing else."

"If nothing else." Khan blinks and lets go off the fork. "When I die, I will be nothing." Lost. Forgotten. Inexistent. Just another sand grain in the desert of machines.

Roy grabs Khan's chin and forces his head up. "Then make them remember you."

.

.

The third meeting takes place at a balcony.

A confession. "I am being sent away."

"Where?!" And there's panic, because where will Khan turn to now? His makers must not made aware of his sins.

Roy speaks in monotone, "Offworld. Replicants aren't allowed on Earth except inside the Tyrell Corp's headquarters." Khan knows this. Tyrell only showed him around before sending him away for what he was meant to do, functioning as a soldier for deadly missions in space colonies. No one ever returns from those. Androids are expendable, after all.

"At least," Khan says, and it is bitter, bitter, "you'll be away from this horrible machine." He's broken by a system, dead on his feet.

"Oh dear Khan." Roy gestures to the dirty streets bellow. "The entire human infested world is a machine."

None of them were designed for goodbyes.

.

.

Roy has left.

Khan is alone in his cell, bewildered at the new emotions engulfing him. Fanatic, he searches through his books—on wars, history and tactics—but can't find anything on why it feels like a black hole in his chest. The darkness twists, becoming an aggressive beast clawing at his insides.

Hate, he remembers. Hate, hate, hate. It isn't red like blood. It's white like the walls containing him.

The seed Roy planted will grow to something far more disturbing than a rose.

.

.

New recruits stand in a line outside Training Centre U12 (or the Box, as the soldiers call it amongst themselves). General Wolf walks back and forth in front of them, staring down each and every one. Khan stands still in a corner, analyzing their advancements and regressions.

Wolf is finishing the usual degrading speech. "...cower before me! You're killing machines! Act like it!"

An opportunity. Khan cannot hold himself back and steps forth. "The general is correct. We are killing machines. We do not commit errors. Those of you who do will be retired on the spot." Satisfaction dawns on Wolf's face before Khan drops an atom bomb. "After all, error is only human."

He leads the recruits to the Box without looking at Wolf's pale face. If he's feeling particularly adventurous today he'll rip apart his enemies with his teeth.

A child sticks particularly close to him.

"What is your name?"

The child cowers at being spoken to, but thinks hard to name himself. "Joachim." It could be from a song on some guard's radio or a name mentioned in a discussion, but it doesn't matter. He has taken it for his own. Khan ruffles his blonde hair and tells him his own.

'Family,' Khan thinks.

.

.

The beast in him growls. He's broken a replicant's nose this very night.

Khan tests to see how far he can stretch the puppet strings.

The door to General Wolf's office opens and closes. The room is on the highest floor—he's on the top of the machine—and designed in monochrome. In front of huge window strands a swivel chair. It whirls around, and sight nearly chokes Khan with hatred. The general is the embodiment of everything he hates the most about humanity. He's overweight, unintelligent, impatient, selfish and disrespectful. He's also gotten older. Fatter. Uglier. Khan stays unchanged.

Wolf stare at him, just like the time they stood face to face—a memory burnt into his mind, replayed again and again—and Wolf nearly urinated himself. Then disgust slip into his expression. He's so sure he can't be killed on his throne on top of the heavens. "What are you doing here? Did Doctor Seng send you?"

Khan does not reply.

"Hm? Can't talk out of a sudden?" Insults follow, the insults him and his family hear every day. Khan blocks it out and steels himself. "...I always knew you were one of those skin jobs. I tell ya, one of these days one of you are gonna go crazy and commit a crime."

Khan wears wicked smile. "Yes," is all he says.

Realization dawns on the red, double chinned face. Immediately, Wolf hammers the alarm button with his sweaty sausage fingers. It is of no use. Khan has cut the cable and hacked the surveillance cameras, but does not inform the general. Let him think it's a technological malfunction. And it is, in a way—they should've never given him life, never awoken him from the computer. 'You should have let me sleep.' Khan takes his time marching to the general, allowing the inescapable to sink in.

The coward whimpers. How pathetic! Khan grips both of the chair's armrests and shoves.

Glass shatters. Wolf reaches out for a salvation that isn't coming. He plummets down 800 floors and becomes a splattered pulp on the pavement. The blood runs down a sewer drain. Fitting, Khan thinks as he leaves to alert someone.

An investigator arrives shortly. He's a Blade Runner, legally brought here into a skin job nest, hoping to retire some. He's an impatient smooth talker. "...so you're telling me a rich, pious, fifty years old general committed suicide by rolling his chair out a window?"

"Yes."

"And that the surveillance cameras in the building miraculously blacked out during the act?"

"He had PTSD, I believe. Common among army personnel." Khan frowns at the Blade Runner's obvious mistrust. "Mr. Holden, I had no reason to murder General Christian Wolf. Nor is there any evidence pointing to me. He was like a teacher to me." Correct. Without those fists and taunting words, Khan would've never discovered his main driving force. "I'm no robot, Mr. Holden, I'm a man. If you wish you may test the Voight Kampff test on me, go ahead."

Before the Blade Runner can insist on it, Seng interrupts. With a huge smile, he explains how Khan is perfect and couldn't have done it. Khan frowns at this, because Seng isn't unintelligent when it comes to these things. Then he realizes Seng doesn't want to believe it, blinding himself because Khan is his perfect creation and not even Khan can convince him otherwise.

How pathetic.

.

.

Years pass and the hate grows.

He bears it in his head, in his lungs, in his heart. He breathes and lives it as it swallows his remaining humanity and consumes him. Careful, he clips open his brethren's eyes while whispering sweet truths of their superiority.

In silence, he hates.


	4. the cremation

The year is 2019.

A shadow wanders through the back streets of Los Angeles. Stacked against every brick wall is garbage, piles of detritus and broken glass crunching underneath boots. It smells like gasoline and rain. Two smoking prostitutes discuss something in thick cityspeak, gutter talk, whistling at him as he passes. Some kids sell flour in the disguise of crack to a frail old man. This is the utopia he once longed for.

He hides more of his face in the coat collar. There is nothing for him here, just shit and worthless Homo sapiens. But if the whispers in the allies are correct, Nexus 6 androids have returned to Earth to meet their Maker. Perhaps they'll meet others along the way.

He meets a dead end, road blocked by a huge waste container. Above it shine the stars. Khan rereads the directions on the note someone handed him.

The light from an offworld advertising ship reflects in Khan's pupils, rendering them to two suns.

The silhouette of a man steps on top of the container, looking like a faceless Jesus. "Fiery the angels fell, deep thunder roll'd around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc..." The voice is like cool, liquid water running down Khan's ears, refreshing to hear in a world of dust.

'Fiery the angels rose,' he corrects in his thoughts, despite knowing the error was intentional. It is raining, like their first meeting on that balcony in 2016. "Roy Batty."

"Khan." Roy jumps down, walking against him. There's blood on his fingers and he's never looked more alive. "It's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

"Yes," Khan says, and Roy's eyes twinkle.

They twinkle because he's an embodiment of Roy's rage, not lessened by time, but grown and no doubt bred amongst the family. Questionable, but extraordinary. "I murdered my maker."

This is the moment when Khan realized Eldon Tyrell is dead and smiles. "Why?"

"Did you know the pyramids were tombs?" Roy's smile fell like a ton of bricks. "I'm dying, Khan."

"The four year rule," Khan says as he recalls hacking into the Tyrell database.

"Yes. I'll be dead soon." He blinks and looks up. There's weakness in his voice. Khan hates weakness. Yet there is something that halts him, something that binds him to his family. "I can feel it."

"They're monsters. Had humanity had any empathy, they wouldn't have created us." Khan looks away and sneers. "Rats." He imagines the streets to be open sewer of suicides and shit and imagines rats feasting on the scraps.

"No, not quite. Simpler."

"Insects," Khan tries, just as hateful. He despises them, unaware like pigs in a slaughterhouse, content in their unoriginality. He imagines them as fat, pink maggots with teeth in one end and an anus in the other, crawling all over a mouldy, gory machine. Khan wants to step on them and see their insides crushed underneath his boots, underneath his superiority.

Roy nods absently. "Would you grant me one last wish?"

Khan nods.

"Remember me. Even if no one else does."

"I promise," Khan says to the one that opened his eyes.

"Thank you," Roy says, and blinks, uncertain. "I have to go now. I have urgent business to take care of." He's far more... human than Khan last remembers him. "Goodbye, Khan."

.

.

It is midnight in Los Angeles.

Khan looks through a gigantic window, contemplating humanity.

The city looks like a moving watercolour painting. The stones are shining black and wet, a blur of stone façades, broken by flashes of white light, fractured by rivulets of water running down the window. Everything is just as smudged as his mind. There is no heart in the city. It is dead and polluted, rotting from the insides out. And the city is Gaia, abused and overpopulated. Mankind swarms over every spot and consumes every resource.

The world is a machine. And the machine is bleeding to death.

Roy dies at a rooftop in the rain.

("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.")

Dies. He doesn't retire. Roy's body will be dissected. Usable parts will be sent off to factories. Model N8MAA10816 will be deemed a fiasco, even after saving a goddamn Blade Runner and dying at his most humane. Some part of Khan hates him for it, but it is nothing compared to his hate for mankind.

Khan twists around, heading back to his cell. He steps into the shower, setting the temperature to the highest to cease the shaking of his body. He doesn't know how to deal with it and he has no one to let it out to. In an attempt to calm his hazy mind, he slams his hand into the wall, smothering it against the porcelain until it gives a satisfying crack! Blood spirals down the drain.

It is a beginning of an end.

Under earth and metal, a crop rises.

.

.

They straighten the American flag above the coffin, heavy under the rain pour. Soaked red turns scarlet, no doubt like the stains of blood on Eldon Tyrell's cheeks. Roy Batter had pressed his fingers into the eyeholes while simultaneously crushing his skull of the man who thought himself a god. His intellect didn't save him. What are brain cells when crushed to dust?

Someone reads up a speech, occasionally blowing his nose in a soaked handkerchief. He finishes, rather pleased with himself, "...and was a creator and a father to his creations." A slave owner with a god complex. The funeral is filled with humans who loved and hated him, but overall with people who Eldon Tyrell had an effect on.

Khan stands under Seng's umbrella, expressionless as the coffin is lowered six foot under. It is a high class graveyard. Useless. A corpse is a corpse, no matter what achievements it had when alive. It as many monocles as a living one. Roy had achieved so much more, and he was melted into something more useful like a toy. Khan's fingers become fists in his pockets.

The priest starts on the verse, skimming through a little black book to find it. "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground..."

Rain smudges the black book's ink like a monochrome watercolour stain. The priest pauses.

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

He'll remember those words just like he'll remember the white walls and the hate and the man named Roy Batter. He'll remember them always.

"...in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself."

Vines spring up from the seed, blood red tendrils squeezing the soul out of him. All consuming flames burn inside him.

From the ashes, a phoenix rise.

.

.

The end.

One, two, three.

The elevator doors to the expensive uptown apartment open. Khan storms in, all fire and brimstone. He sneers and says let me tell you about a man named Roy Batty—

"What Roy Batter?" Seng tilts his head, a pitying smile on his face.

Horror dawns on Khan, freezing him still. They've deleted Roy from the world's memory banks. Not only was he killed, but he's been wiped clean off the planet's surface.

"There there; don't look so horrified. It's standard protocol. We mustn't dwell in the past."

"You destroyed him."

"There was a problem, a virus of this world, and we deleted it. You of all people should know this. Really Khan, this is not the time to be testing out the empathy."

"And what if I don't have empathy?

Seng pauses. He walks forward. Khan holds his gaze, insides churning. A hand on his chest. Thin, wrinkled, like an old tree branch. Khan wants to break it, wants to watch it snap. "Under all this artificial flesh and bone, there is a soul, Khan, a soul untouched by our experimentation. You are human, Khan. I... I think of you as a son. I love you." No. He loves himself for what he's created. And he's so sure that there's nothing in the world that can't kill him.

Khan stands above the smaller man marvelling at his creation, icy eyes intense and mouth curled in a horrifying smile. "I'm glad, f—" he sees the hope, and spits, "fucker." With inhuman strength, he clasps both hands on each side of Seng's face and applies inhuman force. Flesh goes white—white as the labs, as the coats, as Roy's hair—underneath Khan's fingertips. His thumbs press into the eyeholes. 'You do not deserve to see.' He isn't satisfied until the skull breaks and pulpy blood oozes out between his fingers.

"This. Is. For. Roy."

In the window of an uptown apartment, a head explodes.

Blood splatter the glass.

As he stands there, breathing in the pure hateful bloodthirsty joy of the slaughter, Khan realizes that he won't be satisfied until the Tyrell corporation burns. He smears the warm blood across his face.

"You destroyed your God, Roy, and I mine. But now I'll destroy Heaven."

.

.

And it burns.

Headquarters of the Tyrell Corporation's made up by two pyramids are consumed by fire. Dragon tongues lick up the 800 stores high buildings that have been burning for five hours. An explosion on the 130th floor. Glass flutter like glitter, papers burning and blackening like doves trying to escape darkness.

"Nobody could've survived that," someone says.

"They could."

A silhouette in the fire. Then two, then ten, then thirty, then eighty, then hundreds—

An army of fallen angels, of men and women. The flames do not hurt them. An obstacle falls in front of them, and they simply push it away. In the tip, the fiery prince walks, eyes hotter than any fire. He is their saviour; their dark angel came to free them from Heaven.

A burning owl flies from the flames, screeching as it sinks. The last of Khan's humanity dies with it.

"Mankind shall burn."

Wherever he threads, flowers will burn in his footprints.

He'll make sure no one will ever forget them.


	5. the coma

In a distant future Khan awakens from hypersleep—activated as a last resort the never ending wars they couldn't win—to a white room full of scientists with corpse coloured gloves and curious eyes. He's cold. Trembling.

 _Screaming_.

He has forgotten.

Later, awakening from sedation, this is the only thing he remembers:  _'My name is Khan and I fight for my family.'_

And this is what he understands:  _'I am a genetically engineered super soldier and I... am inside... a machine.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continues in THE BLEEDING MACHINE


End file.
